Lurlene McDaniel

This was the first of Lurlene's recent books that I have read. It was a lot more romancy and had a more complex plot than her older books.
This one took me two weeks to read, and I am not quite sure why. Every time I picked it up, I read until I had to stop but then had no interest in picking it back up later.
I loved the plot twist! I knew there was one coming, but I did not expect it to be what it was.

Tropes: secret identity

Age: NA since characters are college-aged but with a ya writing style

Content: kissing, mentions of sending nudes and suicide and depression and sibling loss

4 Stars… (més)

I read this when it first came out fifteen years ago. I was big into teacher-student romances for a few years, and wrote some stories I was really proud of. This was one of the ones I read. I had no idea who Lurlene McDaniel was and certainly just how far out of her normal wheelhouse this was. She writes three-star, skimmable books about sick teenagers who die and how sad their surviving friends and family are, with the story weighted towards the sad people but not the dying person. These premises are excellent and I like them a lot. My favorite book is a YA coming-of-age sick lit tragedy, even. I'm not knocking the genre at all. Her writing isn't for me, that's all. She's a prolific writer and has been doing this for decades, and I congratulate her on her success.
So coming back to this and seeing her name was weird. Definitely raised my eyebrows but also tipped me off to what kind of writing it would be. I plugged her name into the ebook system, in the mood for three-star books about dying teenagers. And saw this among the usual offerings. I read it to see if I still hate teacher-student romances, as I have for a decade or so. The older I got, the creepier it got. It's still creepy. I am kink-shaming, here, and I understand that.

This book was clearly based off of predator Mary Kay Laternau. I suspected it and then Seattle popped up in a conversation and I knew. For books like these...this would have been deliberate. This may have been a mishmash of different teacher-student sexual assaults IRL, shoved into this book. The teacher gets plenty of chapters dedicated to her POV. Psychotic asshat. I kept skipping her chapters and then I had to skim back over them because something plot-relevant showed up! BOO! I'm -glad- I consider McDaniel's writing three-star. If it had been five-star, I wouldn't have been able to finish this book. I felt like puking anyway. Didn't, but I felt like it. I took some extra medication, even, is how unsettling this book is to me as an adult. The victim's best friend gets chapters. I have no idea why. Her characterization was ninety percent "I love Ryan! RyanRyanRyan woe is me! I do not want to damage our friendship!" and ten percent, "Oh, I um, play basketball and also have an autistic brother but he's just kinda there and I'm not going to talk about either of these things and what they mean to me because Ryan." I got it the first time, you--sigh.

The descriptions of autism are outdated. The brother is pinned down in the book a few times, twice on the page and once off. I have no idea why he was even in the book. He added nothing to plot or characterization. Not that there was much to begin with. Ryan gets the most characterization by far. No one in this is particularly sympathetic, but if I had to pick, he would be the closest. I am so sorry that a psychotic asshat got ahold of him. She was a slobbering pervert indeed, and also--controlling. Her controlling and manipulative nature was weaved solidly into the book, and for a tiny moment I wondered how many clues i'd originally missed. I hate to say it, but I would not normally credit McDaniel with being able to write that because romance and horror are so different. Cell phones are repeatedly mentioned but it's evident that it's the cell phones of the 2000s being mentioned; not the ones people use today. This, back then, was to indicate wealth and class. It was an interesting way to do so.

I remembered the ending. The epilogue. The walking through the misty graveyard. I remember the beautiful imagery and back then, I had considered the ending haunting. Now it just gave me chills of disgust. McDaniel introduces the book and provides a postscript, both indicating in each that she disapproves of student-teacher relationships and she indicates the power dynamics. I think she was ahead of her time in that. I don't remember this being discussed the way she did in those author notes, in public back then. Now, it is, and rightfully so.
I don't know how to describe my feelings in conclusion. I mean, it was nice to revisit something i liked as a teenager with the understanding i would likely hate it as an adult. I went in fully understanding this would disgust me and possibly have me upset. I chose to read this, and chose to read it all the way through. I don't plan to read it again and don't foresee myself recommending it.

Gonna peruse McDaniel's normal offerings, though, on my ebook device. Nice, safe, return to sad teenage stuff.… (més)